mgo.licio.us

"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

football

It's a slow week with football not quite going yet, so I thought I'd pose a question to the board that has been occupying my brain since this whole OSU thing began and media members began talking about whether the NCAA was obsolete or not. Here goes:

In the not-so-distant future, schools run amok. Programs realize that after OSU got off with a wrist-slap, their program can do whatever it wants, as long as they deny knowledge of it. College athletics descend into anarchy. Teams no longer follow NCAA rules, making the NCAA obsolete.

Schools begin joining a separate entity from the NCAA, a new governing body of college athletics. While the NCAA was formed on the basis of amateurism, the new regime is only interested in one thing—money. None of the old rules will apply, including being allowed to pay players, and boosters are allowed to run amok.

Slowly schools pull away from the NCAA, beginning with those on probation, and moving through the SEC, spreading northward. Not all schools decide to leave—some of the more academically oriented schools want to continue to do things the right way. They decide to stay with the NCAA. The fear is that these programs will dissipate into oblivion when the new, money-laden, high-octane counter to the NCAA gets up and going.

The dispute moves north to Ohio, where OSU decides that they can be a lot more successful if they are able to pay players up front without worrying about tattoo parlors or car dealers blowing the whistle. Ohio U, however, does not have the money or prestige to make the move. The new governing body continues to leave small schools in its wake.

After picking up most of the SEC, Big 12, and a few schools from the Big 10, they move on to Michigan. State has already caved, moving to the protective wing of the new structure, and hopes that Michigan will follow suit so that they can keep getting blasted by Blue on a yearly basis. The commissioner calls Dave Brandon, and tells him if he wants to stay relevant in sports, and not turn in to an Ivy League school, UM must join the new governing body. He asks the fans what they would prefer through an on-line forum.

So, gents, here is my question: if the above scenario did occur, and Michigan had to choose between these 2 options, which would it be:

1.) Stay with the NCAA. This forfeits any sort of possibility of future championships on a national level, but will allow Michigan to continue to do things the right way. They become the equivalent of an Ivy League school with regard to sports.

2.) Drop the NCAA like it’s hot. We begin paying players, working with boosters, and forfeiting our century-long heir of superiority over other schools. We continue to be relevant in the national landscape, but our academic reputation takes a huge hit.

Although we may despise Notre Dame there have been some valuable contributions by Notre Dame football blogs. One of the best was the Pick Six contest that the now defunct Notre Dame blog Blue-Gray Sky used to operate. Before the season you pick 5 ranked teams and one unranked team that you think will end the season with the highest rankings after the bowls are done.

I enjoyed entering the contest when Blue-Gray Sky was still around so with Brian's approval we're bringing Pick Six to MGoBlog.

Here's how it works.

1. We divide the top 25 into 5 groups of 5 based on the preseason AP Poll: 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, etc. For this year's poll, the groups are:

A: Oklahoma, Alabama, Oregon, LSU, Boise State

B: Florida State, Stanford, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Nebraska

C: Wisconsin, South Carolina, Virginia Tech, TCU, Arkansas

D: Notre Dame, Michigan State, Ohio State, Georgia, Mississippi State

E: Missouri, Florida, Auburn, West Virginia, Southern Cal

2. Before the season starts you pick one team from each group, plus one unranked team. You're trying to pick the teams you think will finish highest in the final AP poll (after the bowl games).

3. Each week we'll try to update and publish the standings in a spreadsheet so you can track the progress of your teams. You get 25 points for having the #1 team, 24 points for the #2 team, on down to 1 point for the #25 team. Unranked teams get zero points.

4. The winner is the person with the most points (i.e. the highest ranked teams) after the bowl season.

5. And the grand prize? I will personally give the winner 10 meaningless upvotes. Plus some guy named Brian will give you 3 MGoShirts from the MGoStore. Places 2-5 all get a free shirt as well.

Throughout the season I will give semi-regular updates on the progress of the contest in the Diaries.

That's it for the Pick Six: short, sweet and simple. Polling closes on Wednesday August 31 at 12 pm (ET), so get your picks in now. Good luck!

I tried to embed the GoogleDocs form here, but it didn't work for me (and yes, I switched to plain text editor. Does mgoblog accept <iframe> tags?). Any help would be appreciated.

I know this is a little overreactive since we haven't seen a game yet, but the news on the DL is getting frustrating. All we heard about for 8 months is how we have 97 DL coaches on staff and every coach has coached DL for at least 25 years a piece. These coaches were going to turn the potential of the DL into the 75 Steelers.

So far this camp we've heard an undersized walk on has earned a starting job, our 1 defensive star has no technique and needs to show more effort and nothing of note from our other 5-7 scholarship guys that have shown great potential or we've heard great things from previous years practice reports.

Since I thought this dline was going to terrorize qb's all year I'm getting worried. I've had little hope for BWC since the day I saw him at the AA game, but RVB, Roh, Martin , Black were supposed to be killling fools this year.

I was getting mad when something dawned on me. Maybe Hoke is pulling a Bo and intentionally riding the DL like Bo rode Dierdorf in 69. This is the anchor of our d and they must play well for us to win the Big Ten. If you're starting to get worried let's all tell ourselves Hoke is pulling a Bo and this DL is going to look like the Lions when they get unveiled in 10 days.

Seems a little weird for our dline leaders to be taking a dump, I think Hoke is pulling a fast one.....I hope.